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NPR

Jamie Walker Ball8 Comments

I missed the memo about NPR.

I didn’t know NPR existed until I was in college.  When I finally tuned in (literally), it was a revelation.   The news programming kept me well-informed about what was happening in the world and the more creative stuff  opened up a whole new world of entertainment to me.  It was love at first listen.

NPR has enriched my understanding of just about everything.  Whenever a youngster considering law school asks me for advice, the first thing I say is, “Are you nuts?” and the second thing I say is, “Start listening to NPR.”  To be a good lawyer, you have to be a good thinker.  And to be a good thinker, you have to understand context, nuance, and complexity.  NPR is a great place to get that.

And now, living in Los Angeles, NPR is a survival strategy.  I’m often stuck in traffic and thanks to NPR, I’m smarter for it.  Two hours on the freeway?  Fantastic!  I’ll get all caught up on the news and maybe get an idea for a book to read or a movie to see.

NPR feeds my head and it also feeds my heart.  I’ll always remember this story which was featured as part of the “This I Believe” series.  Deirdre Sullivan distilled her belief system down to the simple instruction:  “Always Go To The Funeral.”  She described it this way:

“Always go to the funeral” means that I have to do the right thing when I really, really don’t feel like it. I have to remind myself of it when I could make some small gesture, but I don’t really have to and I definitely don’t want to. I’m talking about those things that represent only inconvenience to me, but the world to the other guy. You know, the painfully under-attended birthday party. The hospital visit during happy hour. The Shiva call for one of my ex’s uncles. In my humdrum life, the daily battle hasn’t been good versus evil. It’s hardly so epic. Most days, my real battle is doing good versus doing nothing.

There was such clarity and kindness in this statement, and it revealed something about human relationships that I hadn’t fully contemplated.  I was blown away and was moved to write to Deirdre to thank her.  She wrote me back and I was thrilled.  Here’s what she said:

Every tax dollar I’ve ever contributed and every penny I’ve ever pledged has been more than repaid by the experience of hearing Deirdre’s essay and having that bit of connection with her.  It’s stuck with me and has made me a better person.  Memo received.

P.S.

Gentle reader, I promise not to make a habit of making this blog a political soapbox, but if you’ve read this far, I’m guessing you have similar affections for public radio.   Funding for public broadcasting is once again threatened and if you want to lend your voice to those who are speaking out against the contemplated cuts, I encourage you to go to http://www.170millionamericans.org  to learn more and to get involved. 

© 2011 Jamie Walker Ball

Braces

Jamie Walker Ball6 Comments

I missed the memo on getting braces.

Growing up, my teeth were a little crooked.  Not tragically crooked, but crooked enough to make me self-conscious.  I was keenly aware that from the left, my teeth looked OK, but from the right, yikes.  So when I was around boys I liked, I made an effort to make sure they were looking at my “good side.”  It was a little exhausting.

I’m a Navy brat and there was no military insurance which covered orthodontia for dependents.  Paying out-of-pocket was just beyond my family’s financial reach, so my teeth stayed sadly-but-not-tragically crooked until I was all grown up. 

When I was 26, I went in for an orthodontic evaluation and it turned out I needed a lot of work.  Extractions, braces on top and bottom teeth, rubber bands, the whole shebang.  All of it hurt like hell and cost me a fair amount of money, but I relished every minute of the experience because I was ecstatic about finally having straight teeth. 

Having braces as an adult is a little trippy.  Clerks in liquor stores are especially confused–they see the braces and think “teenager” then they see the crow’s feet and they sense a rift in the space/time continuum.  Adults with braces are this funny little developmental anachronism and they can be quite the conversation piece.  I had braces during my first year of law school and became instantly famous as “that girl with braces.”  Hey, all publicity is good publicity, I suppose. 

A couple of years after my braces came off, Elliot Yamin was one of the finalists on American Idol.  He was my personal favorite that year, not only because of his fantastic voice, but because he had crooked teeth.   After appearing on American Idol, Elliot Yamin had a complete smile makeover:

I completely identified with the bit of shame he must have felt about his teeth.  As a young adult, walking around with crooked or unhealthy teeth tells the world that you were probably kind of underprivileged growing up.    I had a lot of advantages growing up, but good dental insurance and disposable income were not among them.  Having your socio-economic status stamped on your face sucks.  

Going off to college with straight teeth would have been great.  I would have been delighted if my smile had been perfect on my wedding day.  But, the experience of having braces as an adult was actually really empowering.  It taught me that if something bugs you, you can change it, and it is never too late.  Memo received. 

© 2011 Jamie Walker Ball

Meatloaf

Jamie Walker Ball4 Comments

I missed the memo about how to make a kick ass meatloaf.

I mentioned previously that meatloaf was a mainstay of my diet as a youngster,  and I coincidentally married a man who gets unnaturally excited when meatloaf is on the menu.  Needless to say, it’s sort of a religion to me.  My meatloaf recipe is a closely guarded family secret  involving  Colby Jack cheese and green olives…and I’ll either hand it down to my daughter if I ever have one, or I will take it to my grave. 

Growing up, my mom made meatloaf in a loaf pan and it never occurred to me to do it any differently.  Then, I met Alton, and   meatloaf-wise, he literally turned my world upside down:

And with all due respect to my dear mother, cooking meatloaf upside down and out of the pan is a vastly superior technique.  You get more of that crusty goodness on the outside, especially when you coat the whole thing in a mixture of Heinz ketchup and French’s mustard (oh crap…I’ve said too much…)  Comfort food at its yummiest.

I had lived most of my life as a slave to meatloaf convention, but now I can think outside the loaf pan.  In addition to enjoying better meatloaf, I can also say that this revelation clues me in about a couple of things:

First, “traditional”  does not equal perfect and traditions can be improved upon.  No offense, Mom, but my meatloaf kicks your meatloaf’s ass.  

Second, sometimes it makes sense to turn something upside down.  Or  backwards.  Or inside out.  Ever accidentally put a shirt on backward and figure out that you like it better that way?  There’s no one perfect way of doing anything and sometimes rejecting the conventional way turns out to be what’s perfect for you. 

So meatloaf as metaphor for non-conformity?  Why not!   Memo received.

© 2011 Jamie Walker Ball

Fresh Pepper

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I  missed the memo about fresh pepper.

I grew up on a steady diet of tuna casserole and meatloaf and loved it.  But, as I’ve gotten older and moved around the country, it’s occurred to me that I’ve missed a lot of memos when it comes to food.  And the memo about fresh pepper was one of them.

When The Food Porn Channel The Food Network was added to our cable line up, I was instantly riveted.  I noted that so many of the TV chefs made a point to use freshly ground pepper.  I wasn’t in the habit of adding pepper to my food at the table so I wondered what all the fuss could be about.  I mean, who cares if the pepper came from a shaker or grinder?

Turns out, I care.  The extra bit of effort it takes to acquire and use freshly ground pepper makes a huge difference in the flavor.  I could finally understand how fresh pepper could inspire this kind of  passion.

Fresh pepper makes just about everything tastier.   Once discovering the yumminess of fresh pepper, I felt like the protagonist at the end of “Green Eggs and Ham” (does he have a name??) 

 I will grind it on my rice, I like it, like it, yes, it’s nice!  I will grind it on my eggs, and on corn, and chicken legs!  I do so like this fresh ground pepper!

 And I’ve extracted a few lessons from my fresh pepper conversion. First, stretching beyond my humble culinary beginnings has been good for me.  While I still love the simple comfort foods of my childhood, I’m not afraid to branch out a bit.  Second, fresh is almost invariable better than not so fresh.  Third, it’s not that much more effort to seek out a pepper grinder; they’re now in just about every grocery store.   Fourth, when somebody as knowledgable and as adorable as Tyler Florence tells you to use fresh pepper, for heaven’s sake, listen to him.  Memo received.

Nice Guys

Jamie Walker Ball15 Comments

I missed the memo about nice guys. 

 

I’m pretty unoriginal in that I spent a great deal of my youth “wasting the pretty” on jerks.  What I thought was passion turned out to be the anxiety that came along with waiting by the phone, being taken advantage of, and being lied to.   When it comes to love, drama is Fool’s Gold. 

The rest of this might get a little mushy, but just go with it, you cold-hearted, cynical bastards.  It’s almost Valentine’s Day, for Pete’s sake. 

This is my husband, Ryan:

I love this picture of my husband.  To me, it illustrates one of his most awesome characteristics…a sort of light-hearted stoicism.  Yeah, he has road rash on a quarter of his face, but he’s smiling.  This is the essence of Ryan.

I met Ryan in 1995 and it wasn’t exactly love at first sight.  He was cute, but he was just so….nice.  He wooed me in the weirdest ways…impersonating my boss on my answering machine, breaking into my apartment and doing strange things with cookie dough, meeting for our first real date wearing an Elvis wig.  In addition to being nice, Ryan was also hilarious.  Try as I might, I could not resist his silliness and it gradually dawned on me that I loved him.  But where was the “passion”?  I mean, if I didn’t feel like I was going to throw up all the time, how could I possibly be in love? 

And then Jagged Little Pill came out.  Like most angry young women, I adopted “You Oughta Know” as a sort of battle cry.  But then I got the CD and listened to the whole thing and heard “Head Over Feet”.   And proceeded to cry my eyes out. 

 “You treat me like I’m a princess, I’m not used to liking that yet …” Holy moment of clarity, Batman.  Ryan didn’t and doesn’t treat me like a princess, and I wouldn’t want him to.  But he does treat me with respect.  He treats me like an equal.  He cracks me up.  He works his ass off to help ensure that we have a good life. He is the most awesome dad any little kid could hope to have.  And, he loves me. 

So now it’s 2011 and we’ve been happily married for a long time.  We have a wonderful little family.  Who knew the memo about nice guys would be delivered by a feisty little Canadian woman who used to be on “You Can’t Do That On Television”?    Memo received.

© 2011 Jamie Walker Ball

Dysfunctional Modesty

Jamie Walker Ball1 Comment

I missed the memo about dysfunctional modesty.

I’m using the term”dysfunctional modesty” to describe the experience making yourself smaller because it’s actually a lot scarier to acknowledge  how awesome you are. 

Like a lot of people, I got a wonky memo about Nelson Mandela’s 1994 inaugural address.  This wonky memo attributed to Mr. Mandela a quote that actually has its origins with Marianne Williamson.  It’s the “our deepest  fear” speech.   It’s delivered to great effect in this scene in “Akeelah and the Bee“:

No matter who first said the words, when  I first heard them, I felt like Roberta Flack. Seriously, I was killed softly.  My whole life I was told:  “Don’t be a show off” and ” Nobody likes a smarty pants. ”  When I first heard the “our greatest fear” speech, it was like someone had looked straight into me and seen through all my shrinking violet bullshit. It was almost embarrassing. 

On the path to success and happiness, there are often lots of very real obstacles. But for me, the biggest obstacle has always been just copping to my own awesomeness.  It is so much easier to pretend to be less than what you are.   To paraphrase Maria Bamford, living up to your potential really cuts into your sitting around time. 

And it’s not always negative self talk or inertia that brings you down.  There are mean people who say mean things, but I’m guessing some of  these folks haven’t figured out that they too have permission to be fabulous, so they just get really frustrated. Or something.  But you don’t need a bra made out of sparklers to figure out that you can’t let other people get you down. (But isn’t Katy Perry just adorable?  I don’t want to like her, but resistance has been futile.)

So, this little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.  And not hide it under a bushel. Memo received.

© 2011 Jamie Walker Ball

Dinosaurs

Jamie Walker Ball3 Comments

I didn’t get the memo about all these freakin’ dinosaurs.

When I was a kid, there was the T-Rex, the triceratops, the brontosaurus, and for extra credit, the stegosaurus.  Come to find out, the brontosaurus didn’t really actually exist, and my two year old will very pointedly tell you that the proper nomenclature is now “apatosaurus”.   Before I could recover from my shock and confusion about the whole brontosaurus/apatosaurus debacle, I had to hit the ground running to learn a litany of new dinosaurs that I never knew existed.  Thanks to Steven Spielberg and “Jurassic Park”, I was partially clued in about Velociraptors, but it wasn’t until stumbling upon “Dinosaur Train” on PBS Kids that my dinosaur education truly began. 

I’m resigned and comfortable with the fact that my son will always know the names of gazillions of dinosaurs, and I will always know the names of about four of them.  It’s like the dinosaur part of my brain closed up shop somewhere around the 3rd grade, and when I was in 3rd grade, there were about four known dinosaurs.  It’s not just a case of not being able to teach an old dog a new trick, it feels like teaching a cat to scuba dive.  It’s not impossible, but it just feels weird. 

 

I suppose this a part of getting older.  The state of knowledge changes and you just have to try to keep up.  And sometimes it’s not even knowledge, it’s culture.  The other night my husband and I were watching a History Channel program and the narrator made a reference to “BCE”.  My dear husband asked, “What the hell is ‘BCE’?” I said, “Before the Common Era.”  He said, “What happened to ‘Before Christ’?”  This launched the whole discussion about how evolving sensibilities about religious diversity and tolerance have probably led to more people using the more neutral term.  But when we were growing up, it was all BC, all the time.  

When I was a kid, Pluto was a planet, these days, not so much.  If I pay close enough attention, maybe there’s a chance I’ll catch on and comprehend when I’m asked to unlearn and relearn the next big thing.  Memo received.

© 2011 Jamie Walker Ball

Mise En Place

Jamie Walker Ball5 Comments

I missed the memo on mise en place.

Mise en place sounds fancy, but it’s a simple idea.  It’s a French phrase which refers to the practice of reading through a recipe, measuring and prepping ingredients, and ensuring you have the necessary equipment at the ready before you actually begin cooking.  

When I was in 6th grade, I had a particularly sadistic teacher who taught us a lesson about reading and following instructions by giving the class a trick test which featured a long list of instructions, the last of which was to just put your name on the paper and ignore rest of the test items.  For me, cooking was sometimes  like taking one of those trick tests; I’d get to the end of recipe and realize that I was missing an ingredient, or that I hadn’t timed things properly.  Cooking FAIL.

I have been cooking since I was about 10 years old and I think I first stumbled across the idea of mise en place while watching a Food Network show some 20+ years later.  So that’s  a couple decades worth of culinary chaos.   When I finally clued in about the practice of mise en place, it was a revelation.   I can’t say that I employ the practice every time I cook, but when I make effort, the effort is richly rewarded. 

As I’ve mulled over the impact of mise en place on my cooking, it’s occurred to me how universal a principle it is.  Almost every complicated task is made easier if I take a second at the outset to understand the steps I’ll need to take to get from the starting point to the ending point.  This feels like such a big “duh” kind of thing, but I often find myself fighting the urge to dive into new projects without really thinking them through. 

I’m not what Steven Covey would call “a highly effective person,” but it sometimes makes sense to  “begin with the end in mind.”   A little bit of planning goes a long way in most aspects of life.  Sometimes magic happens when you just start throwing stuff in a pot, no recipe, no rules. But sometimes, it helps to have a plan. Memo received.

© 2011 Jamie Walker Ball

All Memos, Great and Small

Jamie Walker Ball1 Comment


So, to get me started I thought it might be useful to think about the types of memos I’ve missed, and I think the most useful way to classify them is by how I’ve reacted when I finally did get the memo. In my humble estimation, there are four types of memos:

Some memos are just funny little moments of insight, some are disappointing, some are delightful, and some are actual revelations. As a I wax on about the memos I’ve missed, I’ll try to take stock of what it meant at the time, what it means now, and tell you all the stuff that occurred to me along the way.